Recording of a talk Richard Stallman gave on software patents for the Irish Free Software Organisation on the 24th of May 2004. Liscenced under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 License. A Transcript of this talk is available.


This movie is part of the collection: Community Video

Director: David Cathcart
Sponsor: Irish Free Software Organisation
Audio/Visual: sound, color
Keywords: Stallman; patents; ireland
Contact Information: david [at] cathcart [dot] cx http://ifso.ie

Creative Commons license: Attribution

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Reviewer: siliconchip - - January 20, 2010
Subject: Great speech by Richard Stallman!
I recommend this video to everyone who wants to understand how software patents destroy innovation and hurt independent and small company software developers and all computer users.

Reviewer: skquinn - - November 27, 2004
Subject: very interesting speech
This is probably one of Richard Stallman's better speeches, I can agree with the other reviewer that the audio quality is lacking in some places but mainly in questions the other people were asking. I could understand Mr. Stallman just fine, but some of the questions/announcements amplified over the microphone system sounded so bad I had doubts that they were even in English. Stallman gave a similar speech to this one where the recording is of better quality but it has not made its way to this site yet.

Reviewer: akb - - July 6, 2004
Subject: fascinating subject, bad sound
Software patents are a huge issue in the computer industry generally and have the potential to destroy the Free Software and Open Source movements. Richard Stallman is the founder of the Free Software movement and speaks very well on how software patents effect freedom in the digital arena.

Its unfortunate that the sound accompanying this important talk is of poor quality, it makes it difficult to listen to the entire video. Good sound is more important than good video for this kind of talk. Some basic tips to people doing these kinds of recordings, get as close as possible, use an external mic if possible, get your sound from the house sound system if possible.